Irish Military Online is in no way affiliated with the Irish Defence Forces. It is in no way sponsored or endorsed by the Irish Defence Forces or the Irish Government. Opinions expressed by the authors and contributors of this site are not necessarily those of the Defence Forces. If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Review calls for delay in £5bn warship programme, putting 3,000 jobs under threat
Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, has been told that the historic Portsmouth Dockyard should be shut down and the supercarrier warship programme delayed in a report he commissioned into the future of British shipbuilding.

The recommendations could put up to 3,000 jobs on the south coast at risk, while the second of the 65,000-tonne £5bn supercarriers would be delivered at least two years later than planned to sustain workload at defence giant BAE Systems' other dockyards.

The move would be a massive blow for Portsmouth, which can trace its naval roots back to the early 13th century and was where the Mary Rose was built in 1509.

BAE is sensitive over the likely closure of a dockyard, having come under fire from workers and politicians over job losses in Brough, North Yorkshire, and the shutdown of the 165-year-old Vickers Armstrong factory in Newcastle. However, The Independent on Sunday revealed in January that BAE had hired LEK Consulting to examine the future of Portsmouth and two dockyards on the River Clyde.

BAE was concerned that work would dry up once the second supercarrier, the Prince of Wales, was launched in 2018, with the Type 26 Global Combat Ship programme not commencing until 2020.

Following this news, the Ministry of Defence asked Admiral Sir Robert Walmsley, a former chief of defence procurement, to look into the supercarrier programme. Sir Robert's report is now sitting on Mr Hammond's desk and forms a major chunk of the defence department's value-for-money review of its biggest projects.

Under the terms of a 15-year agreement struck with BAE's shipbuilding arm in 2009, the department would have to cover the cost of any dockyard closure, while it has also guaranteed £230m of shipbuilding and support work a year. A Whitehall source said that the report showed there will soon be "excess capacity" in Britain's shipbuilding industry, and that it had listed four BAE dockyards in order of risk of shutdown.

The 169-acre Barrow-in-Furness shipyard – not thought to be included in LEK's assessment – was "bound to survive … as it can build anything", which includes submarines. Scotstoun and Govan in Scotland were also likely to be safe, while Portsmouth is "vulnerable".

"If they don't shut something the shipyards will be inefficient, we all have to face up to that," said the source, who added work would still be needed to prevent workers kicking their heels ahead of the Type 26 programme. "They might want to keep the Prince of Wales carrier building programme running, as you can't improve efficiency without a market."

An MoD spokesperson said: "The current Government asked the new Chief of Defence Materiel to review all of our major projects to assess progress and value for money. Sir Robert Walmsley's report is part of this process and the department will consider its findings in detail."

Referring to the LEK report, a BAE Systems spokesperson said: "As part of our business planning activity, we are reviewing how best to retain the capability to deliver and support complex warships in the UK in the future."

it would be politically very difficult to delay the carrier programme any further - one of the reasons Hammond gave for the cancellation of F-35C and going back to the 'B' was that the 'C' and Cat and Traps involved an unacceptable time-lapse over the STOVL 'B' of 3 additional years to get back into carrier strike operations. he can hardly then announce that carrier strike will be put back another 2-3 years to make BAES's life easier.

if the £230m per year figure is accurate - then instead of paying the buggers to twiddle their thumbs just order another T45 and use the test-bed SAMPSON to fit it. same (ish..) cost, but with one more ship out of the deal...

The team behind the Navy’s future flagships have produced a series of stunning posters to demonstrate the sheer scale of the carriers – including parking one on the Thames outside Parliament.

To give the public an idea of the sense of scale of HMS Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, they put one on the Thames next to the Palace of Westminster and another at Victory Jetty in Portsmouth.

Images: Aircraft Carrier Alliance

DINKY? Now who’s dinky?

Some recent newspaper articles have branded Britain's next-generation carriers ‘dinky’ (after a toy manufacturer popular up to the 1970s).

But thanks to the team behind the 65,000-tonne leviathan, we can now show you how the future flagship might look – and dwarf the Palace of Westminster, among other locations – courtesy of several artist’s impressions and graphics.

At 280 metres (918ft) long the carrier, which will enter service later this decade, is 15 metres longer than the Palace of Westminster (which runs along the Thames for 265m or 870ft).

Her masthead would rise 58m (190ft) above the river – not as high as Big Ben (96m or 315ft), but six metres (20ft) taller than Nelson’s Column.

As for the width, well with a flight deck beam of 70m (229ft), she’d stretch nearly one third of the way across the Thames.

With the first of the two super-carriers nearing outward completion at Rosyth on the Forth, the Aircraft Carrier Alliance wanted to demonstrate the sheer size of Her Majesty’s Ships Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, using graphics of the ships alongside at Westminster and in their home base of Portsmouth.

“They’re stunning images and show that the UK can expect two really spectacular ships once construction is complete,” said Ian Booth, programme director of the Alliance.

As well as being longer than the iconic Victorian parliament building, each ship is three times longer than Buckingham Palace, five times the length of the Angel of the North, equivalent to 28 of London’s world-famous red buses parked end-to-end and 66m (216ft) longer than Brunel’s magnificent Clifton suspension bridge.

Obviously, only computer graphics can ‘park’ the carriers on the Thames at Westminster – but how far up London’s great artery could they sail?

Type 23 frigates are regular visitors to the Pool of London, passing through Tower Bridge before berthing next to HMS Belfast. Carriers such as HMS Illustrious or Ocean, which spent much of last summer on the Thames safeguarding Olympic events in the capital, go no further than the loop in the Thames at Greenwich.

According to the experts at the UK Hydrographic Office in Taunton it’s not Queen Elizabeth’s draught – the depth of the ship below the waterline – of 9.9m (32½ft), which is only a couple of metres more than Illustrious, which poses a problem but her width.

With a beam of 39m (128m), widening to 70m at the flight deck level, unlike her predecessors she’ll be too big to fit through the Thames Barrier.

So this is the only time you’ll ever see her in the capital…

A graphic compares the future carriers with other British icons including Stonehenge, the Clifton suspension bridge and Buckingham Palace

As for the real thing, well outwardly Queen Elizabeth is now almost complete.

The largest section of the hull, an 11,300-tonne segment which was delivered to the assembly yard in Rosyth late last year, is being joined to the ship as we speak.

The forward island (uniquely, the ships will have two towering above the flight deck) is due to be shipped from Portsmouth to the Forth next month and installed the following month.

Also arriving in Rosyth next month will be the final two sections of the flight deck, followed by the aft island which a barge will ship from Scotstoun on the Clyde around to the Forth during the summer.

The last external piece of the gigantic jigsaw, the ski ramp which will help propel the F35 Joint Strike Fighters into the air – similar to the ramps which did the same for Harriers on the Invincible-class carriers – is due to arrive in the winter.

Queen Elizabeth is due to be ‘launched’ – more accurately ‘floated out’ of a specially-extended dry dock – in 2014 and will begin sea trials in 2017, with the next-generation jump jets joining her the following year for extensive trials

I read an interesting spin being put on the F35B in AFM last month. They wrote that because the B variant operated closer to shore, its loss of range in comparison to the C model was not that bad because by being closer to shore alternates it needed less reserves than the C variant that operates further out.

How you can argue that the necessity of placing a carrier group closer to shore due to a short legged aircraft is a good thing is beyond comprehension. In any case a conventional carrier operating a greater standoff range may well be as close to a friendly shore alternate anyway.

The B model is not designed for maximum force projection. It is designed to support USMC amphibious ops, with the USN providing wider area protection. This persistence with the B model is baffling and must be influenced by one or two nostalgic FAA ex Harrier jocks.

This persistence with the B model is baffling and must be influenced by one or two nostalgic FAA ex Harrier jocks.

Agreed. It's almost as if they want to be a second tier force.

As it stands now they'd better hope that the French do actually build a second carrier, because the RN will need all the help it can get if it's ever going to conduct offensive air operations without the US present.

The thing is though that that these two conventional carriers are not replacing conventional carriers, but two anti-submarine carriers, which made sense during rthe cold war, the RN having got out of conventional carrier operations in the 1970's, as they moved east of suez.

its easy to talk about buying F-18 without forgetting that there is no institutional knowledge around operating fixed wing aircraft from carriers, just vstol and helicopters, and no amount of cross trainng with france or the US will develop rthat capability quickly

It all dates back to 1998 when the world was very different, and the british navy got its dream, and it suited the politicans to build carriers as it was like nuclear weapons bound up in retaining influence 9 we can leave the Eu if we want), and created jobs in cyclops' back yard.

Fast forward to 2013, and perhaps perhaps two ships rather like USS america (LHA-6) would be far more useful. Thats what all the other european nations who operated small ASW carriers during the cold war opted for

Fast forward to 2013, and perhaps perhaps two ships rather like USS america (LHA-6) would be far more useful

That's looks to be the way it's going alright. The UK are going to all of the expense and trouble of building carriers plenty big enough to operate as conventional CATOBAR carriers, and then basing relatively short range (relative being the key term) STOVL fighters on them, and thus removing the ability for fixed wing AWACs. A this stage, they would have very nearly have been better off with a pair of 45,000 LHAs. For the price, they could easily afford 3 of them (the America is being built on a fixed price contract for $2.4bn, the two UK carriers are expected to come in at £7bn, or $11bn). Put a well deck on them and they'd have very useful Amphibs.

The RN have had a number of pilots train in fixed wing carrier ops with the USN over the last few years. I'm not saying it would be easy to go back to running conventional carrier operations, but it would be far from impossible - be that with F/A-18s, Rafales or 35Cs.

The first of the world's most powerful marine gas turbines has been installed in the Royal Navy's new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth at Babcock's Rosyth shipyard in Scotland.

The Rolls-Royce MT30, at 36 megawatts (around 50,000 horsepower), is the world’s most powerful marine gas turbine engine. Two MT30s will be installed in each of the 2 new Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers and will provide two-thirds of the 109 megawatts needed to power the 65,000-tonne ships - enough electricity to power a town the size of Swindon.

The power generated will meet the carriers’ demand for energy, which includes the propulsion motors, weapons and navigation systems as well as the entire low-voltage requirements for lighting and power sockets.

The MT30s are being installed as part of a gas turbine alternator which also includes an alternator and gas turbine enclosure, weighing a total of 120 tonnes.

The success of the Illustrious type carrier was the option to swap engines with other ships in service, i.e Type 42. Otherwise, when engine overhaul or repairs are required, a frequent occurrence on Gas Turbines, the engine comes out and the ship is tied up, dead in the water.
Vince, Lusty and Ark all carried spare turbines, which were rotated between ships at frequent intervals.

Rolls Royce Olympus was the choice of high performance gas turbine for the RN for 40 year...also used by Concorde. If its one thing the RN get spot on everything its engines....apart from the Mirlees in the Ton Class sweepers.